Van Gogh, Monet and Quais

Yesterday we joined the BYU art history study abroad on an excursion to Anvers-sur-Oise (the town where Van Gogh spent the last 81 days of his life, painted 80 canvases and died) and Giverny (home of Monet's famous gardens). They were so beautiful!!!! Plus impressionist art is probably my favorite, the only thing that would have made it better is if we could have gone to Renoir's home was well.

In Anvers-sur-Oise, they have signs depicting Van Gogh's canvases in front of the scene that he painted. It's super cool because you can see exactly what he was seeing when he painted it. Here's a couple examples:

It was so cool seeing them in person. My favorites though were the wheat fields. They were so pretty! And the lighting was beautiful!

So after wandering around the quaint town for a little bit (and I saw a Brittney just like Buster, it was so cute!) we went to this interactive museum that was actually really cool. It explained what life was like during the time of the impressionists and it was very non-museumy. After that we headed back to our purple-and-pink bus to go to Giverny!

Giverny was absolutely gorgeous! I was actually surprised that the gardens weren't really big--they were definitely big, but I guess I've been spoiled at all the chateaus I was picturing acres or something. But the  house was exactly how I would have imagined Monet's house to be, all in pastels of blue, green and yellow, very open and airy just like his paintings. I couldn't take any pictures inside, but here is the view from his balcony:

the view from the balcony

on the porch

And the gardens of course were also amazing. We were there at the perfect time of year for the water lilies and all of the flowers were blooming. It smelled soooo good, especially the honeysuckle.

So when we got back to Paris I ran over to the Latin Quarter to see this bookstore that all my friends have been telling me about. It's called Shakespeare and Company and it's really cool. All the books are in English and everyone in there was American, which was interesting. But it really did remind me of Flourish and Blotts like someone said-there aren't bookstores like that anymore. I could have spent hours in there just browsing. Of course if I was looking for something specific that would be pretty hard to do...

the front

The building used to be a monastery in 1600 so I think that
explains the piece of a stained glass window

they have a chair from a cathedral upstairs to sit on

the stairs

this is super small, but it explains what their mission is and
I thought it was pretty cool

So after an amazing last dinner with our host mom and her daughter, we finished packing and decided to give her our gift. My roommate Erin had the brilliant idea of buying her an antique book from the quai stalls along the Seine because she collects them. And what was even more brilliant is that we got her an English reader from 1925 as a thank-you for helping us with our French. She absolutely loved it and said that she's never had students as nice as us haha. It was so cute seeing how excited she got :)

Me and Erin with Claude

our front door!

Well it's time to say goodbye to Paris :( I'll miss you!

P.S. Congratulations to my little sister Annica! She graduates from high school today. Good luck! Wish I could be there!

Isn't she beautiful?